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"INTO THE ATOMIC SUNSHINE – POST-WAR ART UNDER THE JAPANESE PEACE CONSTITUTION ARTICLE 9" @ THE PUFFIN ROOM in NYC through Feb. 10, 2008

"We have been enjoying your atomic sunshine."
– General Courtney Whitney of GHQ, February 13, 1946

The Puffin Room, is now exhibiting "INTO THE ATOMIC SUNSHINE – POST-WAR ART UNDER THE JAPANESE PEACE CONSTITUTION ARTICLE 9" through Feb. 10, 2008, curated by SHINYA WATANABE:

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

"In a climate in which the Constitution is faced with the possibility of being revised, the art exhibition "Into the Atomic Sunshine – Post-War Art under Japanese Peace Constitution Article 9" attempts to highlight issues and raise awareness of the influence of the Peace Constitution, which played such an important role in shaping post-war Japan and has had such an enormous impact on the Japanese people, and the reaction of post-war Japanese art to it.

"Article 9 played a large role in allowing Japan to recover from war and helped reshape the country. Japan has avoided direct confrontation with other countries for more than 60 years. Although Article 9 has kept Japan from direct involvement in wars, its indirect involvement in wars has meant that Article 9 has helped maintain a twisted status quo. This unique situation has given artists the opportunity to discover a theme to tackle and express in their works. Numerous artists tried to deal with difficulties such as post-war problems and identity issues; these works are also related to the connection between Article 9 and world peace.

"Despite the uniqueness of Article 9, its very existence is, surprisingly, not well known in other countries. Through this exhibition, not only will post-war Japanese and non-Japanese art be introduced, but Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution will also be made more familiar to audiences outside Japan.

"Named after the “Atomic Sunshine” conference between the U.S. Occupation administration and Japan representatives which created the Constitution of Japan, this exhibition will investigate the historic significance of Article 9 and the importance of its development, and the fact that there has been no Japanese blood shed as a result of direct military confrontation for 60 years after the end of World War II."

Featured Artists:

• VANESSA ALBURY

• JENNIFER ALLORA & GUILLERMO CALZADILLA whose wry political critique imbues much of their work mixing photography, video, & sculpture. The couple live in Puerto Rico, which has a colonial history analogous with Okinawa's and recent projects have focused on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, a US military test bombing site until 2003. In this link to a video clip of "Under Discussion" filmed in Vieques, the artists note that art that turns subjects upside down force us to look at what we habitually see "in a new light." In this way, art changes perception, and, therefore, can change both the perceiver and the world.

• German-born, San Francisco-based photographic artist KOTA EZAWA

• Algerian-born, Belgian and Japanese-educated global artist ERIC VAN HOVE conceives exceptionally thought-provoking experimental works. His "Off the record" (hush hush art show) #2" is a "punctual underground underway art show that takes place at various spots and subway stations in Tokyo, hijacking the recently installed X-Cube cellphone-run locker system, transforming public spaces into surprise private art venues, with a surprise chain reaction guest list.

Van Hove considers his artist talks, not as lectures, but also as unfinished creative works-in-progress, noting that the "raveling contemporary artist is in some way similar to the Kamishibai of Japan who, between the two world wars, was telling from the back of his bike different stories based on a number of picture cards. We can also think of the bakhshi or Ashug of central Asia or the itinerant storytellers of africa (mikilist of the Congos, Griots of Mali, bards, ashiks, jyrau,...) who go from one village to the next, unfolding a story." In a 2006 talk in Tokyo, he "attempted to show how the use of the 'broader public space' -meaning the foreign public space- for artistic interventions pondering such ideas as statelessness or diasporism, can offer an appropriate catalyst for engaging with issues of today."

• YUTAKA MATSUZAWA, who graduated from Waseda University's architectural department and spent 1955-1957 in the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship where he studied the philosophy of religion at Columbia University. Alexandra Munroe, author of Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, wrote that Matsuzawa's earliest works, including a volume of poetry, Immortality of the Earth (Chijo no fumetsu, 1949), explored "subjects that were to preoccupy him over the following decades; Symbolist and Surrealist poetry, quantum physics, and esoteric Buddhist philosophy."

• YASUMASA MORIMURA, an artist whose work is noted for its ambiguities between photography and painting.

• NOBUYUKI OURA, a political artist haunted by Japan's wartime history, endured vicious harassment and censorship because of his provocative depictions of Emperor Showa juxtaposed with violent Second World War military imagery. His work was displayed and favorably received in a 1986 exhibition at Toyama Museum, until right-wingers campaigned against the museum, which eventually submitted to demands that it destroy (by burning) 470 remaining undistributed copies of the exhibition catalogue. Ohura lost his final legal appeal against the museum in 2000.

• YOKO ONO. Audio link to "Revelations (Cat Power Remix)."

• MOTOYUKI SHITAMICHI

• Okinawan-born, New York City-based sculptor YUKEN TERUYA

• Kyushu-native and transnational artist YUKINORI YANAGI who also experienced censorship in Japan in the 1980's when the prestigious Fuji Television Gallery officials refused to allow him to hang a series of prints that dealt with imperial identity and official discrimination against Korean nationals. The gallery allowed the prints to remain in a hidden room not open to the public, a revealing gesture that mirrors how individuals collude in societal attempts to hide historical and social secrets that many know about, but don't openly discuss, for a variety of reasons.

In the early 1990's, before challenges of the myth of a "homogenous" Japan became commonplace, Yanagi brilliantly confronted the issue of Japanese insularity and other social issues in his art. In 1993, he insightfully wrote about what is thought to be "Japanese" and "the other" in his description of his work, "Hinomaru," a subject still under discussion now, 15 years later:

"I was born and raised in Fukoka, the Japanese prefecture closest to the Korean Peninsula. In our island-nation, where people are barely conscious of the national boundaries, I was occasionally forced to recognize the existence of a foreign country right next door. We often found, for example, everyday objects marked with Korean characters, in the debris washed up on shore. To the Japanese, however, "outside" does not only refer to countries across the sea, but also to people living in Japan; Korean and Chinese, native, Ainu, and Okinawans."

Curator Shinya Watanabe is a Japanese-born, New York City based curator and creator of Spiky Art, a non-profit dedicated to emerging and under-supported contemporary artists in New York City.

The Puffin Room is one of a number of projects of The Puffin Foundation Ltd.< > which works toward "continuing the dialogue between the arts and the lives of ordinary people" and to "open the doors of artistic expression by providing grants to artists and art organizations who are often excluded from mainstream opportunities due to their race, gender, or social philosophy."

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